Laminar Research has released a new beta version of its popular flight simulator, X-Plane. The new beta version, 8.10b1, boasts dozens of changes from the previous release version of the program. Among the more interesting changes are the following:

• New feature in Plane-Maker... all the WING editing screens now have a "snap to" feature, letting you snap any wing to any other wing, exactly, with a single selection of what wing you wish to snap to!

• World-Maker can go into 3-D mode... pretty cool!

• You can now have custom LIT panels, and custom LIT instruments.. every one of the 4 layers can have a LIT version!

• New Angle of Attack gage: stall reference... this is an easy way to tell if you are about to stall... it is conveniently labelled with arcs for desired approach angle of attack, and stall angle of attack!

• New Directional Gyro type: LINEAR. This is a really old-style type that looks like a compass.

• New Compass type: ROUND. This is a really old-style type that looks like a directional gyro!